Playing misty for us (again)

The new remake of John Carpenter's
1980 horror flick, The Fog,
demonstrates once again the routine self plagiarism that provides so much of
the film industry's contemporary product, as well as the questionable practice
of repeating a movie with no other apparent motive beyond profit.

The original, a deftly crafted,
efficiently scary, and intelligently reasoned work, helped establish the
director as one of the premier horror masters in American film. The new
version, which in fairness displays the typical Hollywood polish, follows the
original with a good deal of fidelity, but neither transforms nor particularly
improves on Carpenter's vision, naturally inspiring the inevitable and perhaps
unanswerable question: Why make the movie in the first place?

Apparently because of the success of
his earlier Halloween, which quickly
became something of a classic of its kind, Carpenter received a good deal more
money to make The Fog, a much
slicker, more ambitious, and obviously more expensive work. The picture
featured not only a prologue in the form of a history lesson from no less than
John Houseman, but also a supporting cast that included Hal Holbrook and a
brief appearance by Janet Leigh. More important, it employed not one but two
attractive young women who both achieved great success as major scream queens
of their era --- Jamie Lee Curtis (Janet Leigh's daughter) and Adrienne
Barbeau.

The new version incorporates just
about all of the elements of the original, but looks pretty much like a simply
more lavish and slightly less rigorous exercise in horror. Once again a huge
and impenetrable fog bank drifts over a remote seaside town, this time on an
island in the Northwest, penetrating every domicile and transporting inside it
a collection of mysterious, spectral figures from the past, apparently
determined to destroy both the town of Antonio Bay and its citizens. Through
numerous flashbacks and several discussions of regional history, the movie
informs the audience that the mysterious figures are victims of a terrible
betrayal who perished on a clipper ship, the Elizabeth Dane, burned and sunk by four men who absconded with a
chest full of gold back in the 19th century.

As in most horror films, the motives
for the ghostly assault on the citizens of Antonio Bay derive from guilt,
inherited in this instance from their ancestors, the town's founding fathers,
who also happen to be the thieves and murderers who sank the ship. Not
coincidentally, the leading citizens plan to unveil a statue of those men, the
men who established the town back in 1871; the ghost ship and its frightening
passengers show up just in time for the ceremony. Naturally, the appearance of
the uninvited guests tends to spoil the whole celebration for everybody.

The filmmakers succeed relatively
well at establishing the contrasts in atmosphere that account for much of the
picture's suspense and fright. The lovely seaside town, the authentic docks and
boats, the stunning landscape of the Northwest coast initially appear
inappropriate for the ghostly visitors, who tend to ruin everybody's day,
indeed a good many lives.

In the usual manner of the horror
film, beautiful settings simply cry out for some terrible intrusion and humdrum
activities invite dreadful shocks --- a bloody slaughter in the midst of a
party, a skeletal hand thrusting up from the drain when a character washes the
supper dishes --- and normal human relationships lapse into chaos and
meaninglessness.

Like its predecessor, The Fog depends upon the ancient notion
of the ghost as a symbol of the past, the spirit of the dead returning to
revenge some awful wrong. In the movie's Old Testament morality the chief
victims --- and by extension all the inhabitants of Antonio Bay, whatever their
innocence --- inherit the guilt of the past. The sins of the fathers, as the
drunken priest reminds them, pass down to their children.

The remake retains and even
intensifies one theme of the original, that the ghosts who come in the fog to
inflict retribution on the descendants of their murderers make no distinction
between the guilty and the innocent. They haunt every house, pursue every
person, and cause their victims to suffer the terrible, unforgiving logic of
the genre.

Guides & Special Issues

Other Recent Guides:

This Week's Issue

Three Green candidates think they can win
You might have assumed that the competition for the seats on City Council was locked up in the Democratic Primary in June. Rochester’s such a heavily Democratic city that the party’s primaries are considered the real election. But Green Party candidates Alex White, Chris Edes, and David Sutliff-Atias strongly disagree. White in particular bristles at the idea that he’s running as a third-party candidate.
read more ...